Important aspects of the electrochemical reduction of aryl thiocyanates were investigated. A striking change in the reductive cleavage mechanism as a function of the substituent on the aryl ring of the aryl thiocyanate is observed. A similar behavior has been reported for benzyl halides. This is different from what is widely reported for aryl halides where a stepwise mechanism is taking place r...

Gray, Scott and their collaborators proposed the model analyzed in our paper in the 80’s. The model describes an autocatalytic mechanism in isothermal systems where the reaction rate is increased by strengthening the concentration of one of the products. The chemical reaction (Fig. 1) occurs in a continuously stirred tank reactor (CSTR) and it involves two reactants X and Y with concentrations ...

We investigate the effects of hyperbolic hydrodynamical mixing on the reaction kinetics of autocatalytic systems. Exact results are derived for the two dimensional open baker map as an underlying mixing dynamics for a two-component autocatalytic system, A + B → 2B. We prove that the hyperboliticity exponentially enhances the productivity of the reaction which is due the fact that the reaction k...

Cell polarity is typically oriented by external cues such as cell-cell contacts, chemoattractants, or morphogen gradients. In the absence of such cues, however, many cells can spontaneously polarize in a random direction, suggesting the existence of an internal polarity-generating mechanism whose direction can be spatially biased by external cues. Spontaneous 'symmetry-breaking' polarization is...

Analytical analysis of spatially extended autocatalytic and hypercyclic systems is presented. It is shown that spatially explicit systems in the form of reaction-diffusion equations with global regulation possess the same major qualitative features as the corresponding local models. In particular, using the introduced notion of the stability in the mean integral sense we prove the competitive e...

Hydroxylamine (HA) and hydroxylamine nitrate (HAN) have been involved independently in several tragic accidents, which incurred numerous fatalities and injuries. Following these incidents, adiabatic calorimetry and computational chemistry research was conducted on those compounds, suggesting potential reaction pathways of their decomposition, but the mechanism of their unstable behavior, still ...

Biological systems such as yeast show coordinated activity driven by chemical communication between cells. Here, we show how experiments with coupled chemical oscillators can provide insights into collective behaviour in cellular systems. Two methods of coupling the oscillators are described: exchange of chemical species with the surrounding solution and computer-controlled illumination of a li...

Coenzymes are often considered as remnants of primordial metabolism, but not as hereditary molecules. I suggest that coenzyme-like molecules (CLMs) performed hereditary functions before the emergence of nucleic acids. Autocatalytic CLMs modified (encoded) surface properties of hydrocarbon microspheres, to which they were anchored, and these changes enhanced autocatalysis and propagation of CLMs...